Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively

By comparison, DC Comics has been lagging behind their distinguished competition Marvel Comics when it comes to getting their superhero icons on the big screen. Where Marvel seems to be cranking them out at a dizzying pace(3 this year alone!!), DC has taken a more measured approach with the aid of their big bro, Warner Brothers. Christopher Nolan's Batman films are on the verge of ending, and so it's imperative that a new standard be established. Enter Green Lantern, one of the world's most recognizable heroes with his emerald costume and mystical green power ring that allows the wearer to make anything he can imagine. With Ryan Reynolds's physique and charm tackling the role of the fearless Hal Jordan, and veteran director Martin Campbell(Casino Royale) at the helm, Green Lantern should be the superhero film to watch for the summer. Sadly, as if it was struck by the fear inducing enemy of our hero, the film turns tail and runs away from every opportunity to be something epic.

  Green Lantern is fortunate to have a rich and wonderful origin, but it's also terribly complex. Rather than streamling it down, we're greeted to a ponderous introduction that kills any hope for momentum. One of the things that make Green Lantern special is that primarily his adventures take place in the far reaches of space, and so that's where the story begins with a history lesson on the powerful Green Lantern Corps. An intergalactic police force, basically, they protect the over 3000 sectors of the known universe. Their power comes from a massive battery on the distant planet Oa, charged with the energy from the will power of every living creature. Think of it as the Force, only green and visible.

They use this energy to battle forces of fear, or rather a being comprised of pure fear, a creature called Parallax. Readers of the comic won't recognize the creature at all, having been altered to look like a grey smokey blob. Parallax goal is to destroy the Green Lantern Corps, their Guardian masters(who hover in the air like mad gods), and then the universe.  After the greatest and strongest member of the Corps is killed, his ring seeks out a suitable replacement and find him in Hal Jordan, a courageous but risky fighter pilot who has never met a challenge(or a woman) he couldn't conquer.  Blake Lively is his best friend/lover/boss Carol Ferris, who secretly longs for her guy to learn the meaning of the word "responsibility". Go ask Spider-Man. He knows what it means.

The film immediately goes from super cool to super hokey as Hal fumbles around with his new found powers. Establishing that the character isn't an instant expert in such remarkable abilities is essential, but the script by Greg Berlanti and a host of others shows absolutely no subtlety at all. That's a big problem when dealing with a character like Hal Jordan, who walks the tightrope between arrogant blowhard and lovable scamp. All of the earthbound scenes suffer from this lack of attention. It's like someone figured out that the only cool aspect to any Green Lantern story is when he's in outer space, so the stuff on the ground can be made to look ridiculous or pointless. There's a whole subplot with a creepy scientist named Hector Hammond(Peter Sarsgaard) who gets a taste of the fear power and mutates until he looks like Sloth from The Goonies. It might as well not even be there other than to give Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett someone to fritter time away talking to. I will say that Blake Lively is solid, and made Carol a far more interesting character than the dialogue she was given would have you think.

Considering the massive $300M budget(that's with marketing), you'd think the special effects would be where this film really can tip it's hat, but you'd be mistaken. For a film with such a potential for grand, galactic spectacle, the outer space component is strangely lacking. The only planet we get to visit is Oa, which is just a hunk of rock with a million Green Lanterns crowded around looking vaguely bored. It's not terribly impressive. The great promise was that this would be the comic book movie that took our imagination to whole new worlds never before seen, but we get none of that. Even the more alien characters we're introduced to don't work out so well. Michael Clarke Duncan voices the massive GL drill sergeant, Kilowog. Geoffrey Rush is the bird/fish creature Tomar-Re, who serves as a sortof Jiminy Cricket for ol' Hal. Neither has much to do, and when the CGI creatures move around they are blocky and stilted. It's not pretty. If there's anything that makes the Corps worth paying attention to at all it's Mark Strong as their imperious leader, Sinestro. Fans of Green Lantern know what path he's headed down, but I like the way the seeds of his future self are planted about this story. They blow it in the end with a predictable post-credits sequence, but if I were you I'd just leave early and pretend it doesn't happen.

Of all the problems Green Lantern has, Ryan Reynolds isn't one. One of Hal Jordan's greatest traits is his charismatic, winning personality. Reynolds has that in spades. Even if the jokes in the first half of the film fall flat, he gets points for completely buying into them, which makes the audience want to like him even more. It couldn't have been easy since the vast majority of the characters he had to converse with were added later in post-production.

The real problem with Green Lantern is the character itself. What is it that makes him so special? He's brave? Indomitable? Able to conquer his own fears? So what? That's what every superhero can do, from Batman on down to the little mutants of X-men: First Class. Only Green Lantern tries to make a big deal out of it, and it's not particularly compelling stuff. In the comics, all that bold talk about having an unbreakable will reads just fine, but on the big screen it's a crashing bore.

Trav's Tip: Hal Jordan is the first human to be selected as a Green Lantern, a fact just touched upon in the film. Earth would ultimately be the birth planet of five members of the Corps: Alan Scott, Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner.